The Lullaby of Polish Girls

by Dagmara Dominczyk

  Emil clears his throat. “Did you hear about Justyna Strawicz?”

  “I did. Her grandmother called my dad yesterday.”

  “Awful, right?” Emil says it quietly. Emil always liked Justyna. They went on double dates, occasionally, before Justyna’s mother got sick. Kamila bites down on the candy in her mouth and says nothing.

  “I got the package. Dziękuje, kochanie.”

  Two weeks ago, without rhyme or reason, Kamila stopped into the local Gap on her way back from work. She quickly picked up two pairs of vintage wash jeans and some crew socks, boxed them up, and airmailed the package to Poland.

  “They fit great. Wojtek’s too.”

  Something is wrong because she has imagined this conversation every day, and yet she isn’t using any of the words she wants to. Words like homosexual and liar. Words like how and why.

  “It’s late over there.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I couldn’t sleep. Wojtek, on the other hand, he’s—” Emil stops mid-sentence.

  “He’s there?”

  She shouldn’t be surprised. When she left for the airport, Kamila left Emil a note on the kitchen counter, along with his set of the keys, which she had taken from him the day she found out about Wojtek. Baw się dobrze, she’d written. “Have fun.”

  “Do you mind? His parents told him he was no longer welcome at their house.”

  Kamila surprises them both by bursting into laughter. “Would it matter if I did mind?”

  “Kamilka, when you come home, we’ll talk. The three of us.”

  “There will never be a three of us. And anyway, I might not come home. What’s there to come home to? Wojtek in our bed?”

  It’s as far as she’s ever gone to articulating what it is Emil has moonlighted in for all these years. When he and Wojtek, both crying, finally confessed their mutual ardor, she didn’t say anything. She doesn’t recall much from that afternoon, except for her silence.

  Emil’s voice warbles. “I know you’re angry, Kamila. And I am waiting for you to come back, to walk up to me and slap me silly, because I deserve it. But then I want us to, I don’t know what I want.… Kocham cię, Kamilka. I always will.”

  Kamila is afraid of what she’ll say. She’s afraid, and her tears are useless. She swipes at them frantically.

  “Jesteś assholem,” Kamila says finally, conjugating in her native tongue the most befitting of English slurs, the one that’s become her favorite. Her husband and their mutual lifelong friend had fallen in love. She never saw it coming even though it was there all those years, staring her in the face. Should she tell him now that when they were seventeen, Anna Baran pulled her aside and said, “Maybe Emil’s not the one for you. Don’t you think he’s … different?”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know, Kamila. He’s distant. And he says his s like sssss.”

  “What’s his lisp got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  You just didn’t talk about the thing Anna was insinuating, not in Kielce. There were no lesbians there, only old maids. Guys acted queer but they were never actually queer. This was a part of Poland where most guys Kamila grew up with still exchanged nigger, retard, and fag jokes.

  “Don’t call me again,” Kamila instructs Emil quietly and hangs up.

  The next morning, there is a lavish breakfast on the table: hazelnut coffee and toasted croissants, assorted jams, scrambled eggs with fried kiełbasa. Kamila gingerly walks past the cholesterol-laden table and retrieves a banana from the fruit bowl. Zofia is standing at the sink, scrubbing a frying pan.

  “There’s plenty.” She thrusts a wet rag toward the spread. In lieu of a response, Kamila quickly peels the soft, mottled fruit and takes a giant bite. Zofia watches her.

  “Suit yourself. The more for your father.”

  “He doesn’t need more, Mamo. He needs less.” Kamila’s father has given up his jogs, he’s given up lettuce and his morning ritual of black coffee and calisthenics. In fact, he’s abandoned all that he had in Poland, including his doctorate. Now, her father works the night shift at the Lubelski Bakery, where he manipulates dough till the sun comes up. His hands are eternally coated in a layer of flour and in another lifetime Kamila would have loved it, would have accompanied him to work every night just for the smell of warm, fresh loaves. But Włodek says he’s sick of rye bread, and every night he brings home a large pepperoni pizza. Every night he and Zofia eat the entire thing at an alarming pace. Her father’s American dream is nothing but menial labor and take-out.

  “When you start cooking around here, then you can talk about what’s good for my husband. Worry about your own.” Zofia wipes her hands on her apron and stares at Kamila.

  “I’m off,” Kamila says quietly, walking around her mother.

  “Look at you! Nothing gets to you, Kamila? Your friend’s husband murdered, your husband …”

  “My husband what?” Kamila asks lightly, but hurries quickly toward the foyer.

  Zofia follows her. “We need to talk.”

  Kamila fumbles with her coat, grabbing her hat and mittens. “I don’t want to be late. What do you want to talk to me about anyway? Huh, Mamo? What the hell could we possibly talk about? You never liked Justyna, always called her a slut. You never liked any of my friends, so what do you care?” She wants to stop talking, fling the door open, and leave. But Zofia grabs her arm now, forcing her to turn around.

  “I don’t wanna talk about Justyna. I wanna talk about Emil. I wanna talk about the fact that you married a queer.”

  For a moment Kamila can’t move. Zofia’s face is close to hers, breathing heavily. Finally, Kamila twists her arm free and yanks the front door open. She runs out into the snow.

  Justyna

  Kielce, Poland

  In the rain, they huddle. No more than a dozen, all dressed in funereal best, black woolen coats that graze ankles, black felt hats, everything ironed and pleated, layers upon layers. Underneath Paweł’s old leather motorcycle jacket, Justyna is wearing a long spandex dress that hugs her like a second skin. She stands off to the side, dying for a cigarette, having to remind herself every so often why the fuck she’s here.

  The funeral was held on short notice. Some people didn’t want to come. Too soon, they said. Too soon for what? she wanted to ask. To acknowledge Paweł’s death, or to look her in the eye? Too soon to shake hands with her sister? Too soon to have to face Damian, who no longer had a father? Maybe for them it was too soon, but for Justyna it wasn’t soon enough. At least planning the funeral had kept her busy.

  Kazia Anielska is wailing. Justyna cringes every time her grandmother lets loose a howl. It’s outlandish, this kind of biblical grieving; people are ping-ponging looks between distraught Babcia Kazia and the stone-faced widow. She catches one of her uncles staring at her, and she lifts her palms toward the sky and shrugs.

  “O, mój Boże kochany! O, mój Boże kochany!” Her grandmother is evoking God’s name with such personal affront, you would think it was her own son in the coffin, or her own husband. It was no secret—to Justyna, at least—that her seventy-one-year-old grandmother harbored a peculiar crush on Paweł. She was always cozying up to him when they walked to Mass, her veiny arm linked in his, batting what was left of her eyelashes. When he told slightly off-color jokes, Babcia Kazia giggled and blushed like a fawning schoolgirl. It was droll at first, but it became disturbing. When Paweł didn’t call Babcia for a few days to inquire if she needed groceries, she would pout and behave like a spurned lover the next time she saw him. The way she was always going on and on about what a wonderful catch Paweł was, how lucky Justyna was that he had proposed, when really, he could have run as soon as Justyna announced her pregnancy, was absurd.

  Justyna squeezes the jacket closer to her body. She marvels at how a funeral can come together in two days, when it takes months of planning to pull off, say, a wedding. Everyone moves with lightning speed when it comes to burying the dead. Fuck this shit,
she thinks, and wonders what people would say if the stone-faced widow took off mid-service.

  She can tell the mourners think she’s not acting her part. But when has she ever? When Justyna first realized she was pregnant she spent a few days punching herself in the stomach, but the pregnancy stuck. She smoked the whole nine months, in denial till the very moment a bloody skull popped out of her insides. But Paweł, Paweł was good, through and through. He wasn’t a glutton for drink, he regularly woke at sunrise, didn’t cheat, lie, or gamble. His shoulder-length mullet, his Hells Angels jacket, his dangly dagger earring, all hid an inherent softness. He was kind, hardworking, and he went to church most Sundays. But what turned Justyna on were the rare occasions when the savage in him surfaced, when he’d throw her on the bed and devour her.

  Paweł was being buried beside his father and mother, at the cemetery off Spokojna Street. For a moment, Justyna had entertained the idea that Paweł would be laid to rest at Stary Cmentarz next to her mother, Teresa; the only two people she ever loved completely. But it didn’t really matter, did it? Her husband was gone; who the fuck cared where the wooden box ended up?

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the young priest intones, glancing down at his Bible. Justyna can tell this is probably his first time at the rodeo because his face is flushed tomato red, and he trips over his tongue as he reads from the book of Psalms. Back at the church, he stuttered while reading the Old Testament passage about Cain and Abel. It was an obvious choice, but in Justyna’s opinion, a tasteless one. What had God been thinking, letting that bastard simply wander the desert for a few decades when he’d committed murder? He had delivered a much more severe sentence for a simple misunderstanding over an apple.

  Justyna stares at Father Bruno, wishing he’d hurry up, but he meets her eyes askance with a sympathetic smile and plods on. Perhaps his stutters have nothing to do with priestly inexperience and everything to do with Justyna’s clingy dress.

  “Ciociu, I have to go to the bathroom.” Justyna looks down and sees her niece grasping her thigh. Her scrawny legs are twisted like pretzels.

  “Tell your mother.”

  “I can’t.” Cela points to Elwira, who is now squatting on the ground, weeping openly.

  “Well, then hold it.” The coffin is being lowered now and she knows this is her cue to walk over and drop a flower into the hole, a final farewell. But she can’t bring herself to do it, and not just because she didn’t buy flowers.

  Cela tugs her skirt again. “I can’t!” Her whisper is frantic now.

  “Be quiet, okay?” She watches as her niece’s oval face crumples and contorts, and then suddenly it goes blank.

  “I pee-peed,” whispers Cela, her chin trembling.

  Justyna kneels down and whispers in her niece’s ear, “Don’t worry, kotku, it’s raining. We’ll tell these idiots you just fell in a puddle.”

  Later that night, after Babcia Kazia has taken the kids to spend a few nights at her apartment in Szydłówek and after every last mourner has left, an eerie silence fills the house. Elwira goes around dead-bolting all the doors, and muttering to herself like a madwoman. She tries to secure the broken balcony doors upstairs by dragging a bookshelf against them. Kielce is a small enough city, that’s what the cop Kurka had told her seventy-two hours ago. There are only so many places to hide, but Filip has evaded the cops thus far. He could be on his way to Italy by now, or he could be skulking in their back garden.

  Justyna finds Elwira in the living room, staring at the television.

  “I wish Tato were here.”

  “Do you?” Justyna asked, and they both knew the answer. Their father was gone, gone since the days his beloved wife lay dying in her little room on the third floor. He hadn’t even been at Teresa’s bedside when she took her last breath: he’d been passed out drunk at Uncle Marek’s house. Right now, their father would be useless anyway. Bogdan Zator couldn’t deal with death, of any kind.

  Suddenly, it seems like there is nothing to do, now that the final resting place has been occupied and the bloodstains have been wiped up. For the time being, Damian has stopped asking about his father’s return. He’s thrilled to have a few days off from school. At the burial he asked her what was in the box, and Justyna corrected him: “Not what, Damian—who,” but she did not elaborate. Of course Babcia Kazia insists that Justyna is damaging Damian further by not telling him outright.

  Elwira breaks the silence as if they have been long in conversation. “So, yeah, I can’t believe Ania Baran called you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s been a few years, right? You missed her premiere. I forgot about that.” Two years ago, Anna Baran was in Poland to celebrate her starring role in a big Hollywood movie—something with corsets and horse-drawn carriages. A lot of their friends took the train to Warsaw for the big event and Anna had offered to pay for travel if they couldn’t afford it. In Anna’s interviews she told the journalists that the premiere wouldn’t mean anything if her Polish friends and family wouldn’t be there. But Justyna didn’t go. The fact that her mother was dead and that she had a five-year-old on her hands had been reason enough to skip a reunion; but there were other reasons too, and so Justyna had steered clear of Anna Baran and her newfound celebrity.

  “It’s actually a good movie, Justyna. You should check it out. I totally cried at the end.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I fucking need now. A tearjerker.”

  Elwira smiles. “I think it’s nice she called. Is she working on a new movie?”

  “I don’t fucking know! We didn’t go over her résumé!” Justyna snaps as Elwira’s face crumples. “She offered to send us money.”

  “Na serio?” Elwira wipes her nose on her sleeve, suddenly bright eyed.

  “Yeah, she did. She’s Hollywood now, right? It’s the least she could have done.”

  But Elwira does not catch the sarcasm in her sister’s voice. “How much is she sending?”

  “Elwira? Are you fucking crazy? Like I would take one złoty. We’re not a charity case.”

  Elwira shrugs her shoulders. “We’re not?”

  “Anyway, you know what surprised me? That Kamila Marchewska wasn’t there. Didn’t even send a wieniec.” It was customary to send a wreath if one couldn’t attend a funeral and Justyna had quickly surveyed the ones that had been on display next to the coffin that morning, scanning the cards for Marchewska or Baran.

  “She’s in the States. At least that’s what I heard,” Elwira answers.

  “I guess it’s the place to be.” Justyna sighs, wondering why she ever gave a shit.

  “Justyna. I’ve been thinking—” Elwira interrupts Justyna’s thoughts.

  “And? How does it feel? Like your head hurts a little, but you can get used to it?” Justyna smiles. Let’s go back to four days ago, she thinks. Let’s be normal again.

  “I think I should move out.”

  Justyna glances up, trying to read her sister. “Where would you go?”

  “Back to Szydłówek. To Babcia’s.”

  “You and Cela and Babcia Kazia, all in a one-bedroom?”

  Elwira lights a cigarette and walks over to the balcony doors. “Well, obviously I can’t stay here.”

  “No one’s kicking you out.”

  “Justyna! What if he comes back here, looking for me? He put his bloody hand around my neck and told me if I talked he’d be back. And I talked, I fucking talked! What if he does something to Cela?”

  “He doesn’t know where Babcia lives?”

  “But she lives on the third floor.”

  “He killed someone with a kitchen knife. I’m sure he can figure out how to climb a balcony or two.” Justyna clicks the TV off and starts for the door.

  “He did. He did, right?”

  Justyna turns back and stares at her sister.

  “What you said now, Justyna. The way you said it. Kitchen knife. This is real, right? There’s no going back?”

  Elwira looks so small next to Justyna,
like a little dove. Once again, Justyna silently curses her mother. If Teresa suddenly appeared like Lazarus in their living room, Justyna wouldn’t think twice about slapping her upside the head. She was young and pretty and fun and she loved them more than anything in the world. And then she died and left them, just like that.

  “I don’t know what will happen if I stay here. I don’t want Damian to suddenly hate me.”

  “Damian lost a father. He’s allowed to hate anyone he wants.”

  “See, this is what I mean. We can’t do this. How can we live together?”

  For a second, Justyna wants to get down on her hands and knees and beg her sister to stay. To confess that she can’t face these four walls alone haunted by the past. In one room the ghost of her mother lies on the bed, where she took her last breath seven years ago, and now there’s the bathroom where her husband’s throat was slashed as he finished taking a piss.

  “Do what you wanna do, Elwira,” Justyna says quietly. “Just don’t leave me alone tonight. Please.”

  Anna

  Kielce, Poland

  The lifeguards are everywhere, slithering around in skimpy orange Speedos. When wet, the cheap lycra works like a suction cup, leaving nothing to the imagination. They swagger around the pool, barrel-chested and cocksure, keeping a lazy eye on the crowd. Anna, Kamila, and Justyna are having a hard time not staring.

  Around the Tęcza Basen, beefy grandmothers sit on blankets, in their bras and underwear, chain-smoking cigarettes while their annoying grandkids in polyester trunks run wild, breaking the no diving rule and getting fished out and carried off like flailing puppies. Kamila, Anna, and Justyna are spread out directly across from the lifeguards’ station, perched on a bleacher. The Tęcza Pool’s stadium seating compliments the gladiatorial pageant they are viewing. On the other side of the pool the lifeguards are surrounded by bleached-blond groupies who never dip a toe in the water. They glisten in the sun like a bikini-clad harem.